The soldier set down his boots.
“Come on, ask me another question!”
“Oh, what’s the use?”
“Try!”
“Very well, then: tell me, whom did you like the best, Yankel the inn-keeper, or the miller?”
“Why didn’t you ask me that at once? I don’t like people that hunt for their beards alongside their noses. Some people would rather walk ten versts through the fields than go one verst by the straight road. But I’ll answer you straight to the point, as they say. Yankel kept one inn, but the miller keeps two.”
“Oh, hang him, he needn’t have said that!” thought the miller, miserably. “It would have been ever so much better if he hadn’t referred to it.”
But the soldier continued:
“When I worked for Yankel, I wore bast shoes, now I wear boots!”
“From where did you get them?”